1.IX.2001

September First
Laurie Kutchins

The sky turned over sometime in the night.
While it happened I slept
under a quilt of geese. My throat

felt their beaks utter
a parched good-bye to the dulled gold
surfaces of summer.

This morning the aspen leaves lean toward me.
They are speaking to one another with an intimacy
I've never known.

When did I first hear the elk's
seasonal love-call,
resonant out of the ghost of dusk?

Who taught me to read the sky?
Twitch of a licked index finger.
A page turned in the dark.